


Loathsome Emotion

by musicaldork



Category: Herbert West - Reanimator - H. P. Lovecraft, Re-Animator (Movies)
Genre: Denial of Feelings, Emotionally Repressed, F/F, Feelings, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Laughter, M/M, Reader-Insert, Smile
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:21:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24648673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicaldork/pseuds/musicaldork
Summary: Everybody knows that Herbert West doesn't do feelings.But if that's the case - why does he feel so utterly undone by a rare glimpse of your smile?
Relationships: Herbert West/Reader
Kudos: 15





	Loathsome Emotion

You always felt things so intensely.

Of course, your face did not betray these thoughts.

As opposed to a careful blankness, you found that you naturally did not tend towards great expressions, or wild, punctuating gestures. As it was, you appeared a very demure, reserved person indeed - as near or far to the truth as any would deem fit to believe.

Expressionism ran wild through the vividly fanciful recesses of your mind, but rarely broke through the surface to your impassive features.

\---

Herbert can’t help but watch your face with a dizzying intensity. His eyes narrow in focus, like you’re a puzzling study he can’t quite figure out.

And then for the first time, he thinks - in all the time he’s known you - he sees you _smile._ A wide one that lights your face up with irrepressible delight and-

_Oh_. You’re _radiant._

Somehow, he’s frozen in place by the realisation. Every suppressed thought and feeling he’s ever had towards you comes flooding up to the surface, choking him into speechlessness.

Your smile breaks into a sudden rarity of a laugh that rings in his ears like rays of pure sunshine, bursting into the room around him.  
(...It’s a disgustingly romantic sentiment he’d surely scoff at were he not too busy being entirely disarmed by... you.)

Herbert is hounded by heart palpitations of a different source - neither reagent fuelled nor from imminent threat of death - but from a feeling from deep within the cavern of his chest, something he can’t quite place.

\---

Tolerate.

If anybody asked Herbert, that’s what he’d say of any company he kept.

He tolerated them.

But suddenly - like a match struck against the grit of its own box, igniting into harsh white, then yellow flame - he found that he no longer tolerated you.

He had a schedule, he argued haplessly to himself, trying to justify the stark realisation with anything other than purposeless emotion. Trying to find the root cause for something that couldn’t be explained.

More than tolerated you. He liked things to be exactly the way they were. It’d simply be impudent to interrupt the rhythm of his schedule. You couldn’t leave his life. You couldn’t leave him.

He _**needed**_ you.

\---

For all his erudition - as many science-minded men are ought to do - Herbert had never quite mastered the skill of social intelligence. 

Mostly by choice, deeming it something below him - a mere distraction to his truest love, something that never had the chance to leave him: his work.

But now, for the first time in his life - pacing restlessly across the grey, stone floor of his basement alone - he found himself regretting it; stricken by an unfounded - and worryingly unwanted - desire of the heart.

That loathsome thing, namely emotion.

**Author's Note:**

> this is mostly based off an idea i really like of herbert being interested in someone who is internally emotive but naturally has a stoic, less expressive face (autism gang rise up) then he suddenly sees them smile or laugh and just LIGHT UP for the first time and he gets smacked in the face with cupids arrow like 'OH FUCK. FEELINGS.'
> 
> head on over to my tumblr (dorkfanfic) if you'd like! requests are open! :)


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